sTRAnE CAsE o DrJekyll MrHydeimg.metro.co.uk/pdf/jekyllchp9.pdf · The One Book – One Edinburgh citywide reading campaign, co-ordinated by the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature

Illustration © Cam Kennedy 2008. Reproduced by kind permission of Waverley Books Ltd44

On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received

by the evening delivery a registered envelope,

addressed in the hand of my colleague and old

school companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good deal

surprised by this; for we were by no means in the

habit of correspondence; I had seen the man, dined

with him, indeed, the night before; and I could

imagine nothing in our intercourse that should justify

formality of registration. The contents increased my

wonder; for this is how the letter ran:

“10th December, 18—.

“Dear Lanyon,—You are one of my oldest friends;

and although we may have differed at times on

scientific questions, I cannot remember, at least on

my side, any break in our affection. There was never

a day when, if you had said to me, ‘Jekyll, my life, my

honour, my reason, depend upon you,’ I would not

have sacrificed my left hand to help you. Lanyon my

life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you

fail me to-night, I am lost. You might suppose, after

this preface, that I am going to ask you for something

dishonourable to grant. Judge for yourself.

“I want you to postpone all other engagements

for to-night – ay, even if you were summoned to the

bedside of an emperor – to take a cab, unless your

carriage should be actually at the door; and with this

letter in your hand for consultation, to drive straight

to my house. Poole, my butler, has his orders; you will

find him waiting your arrival with a locksmith. The

door of my cabinet is then to be forced: and you are

to go in alone; to open the glazed press (letter E) on

the left hand, breaking the lock if it be shut; and to

draw out, with all its contents as they stand, the fourth

drawer from the top or (which is the same thing)

the third from the bottom. In my extreme distress of

mind, I have a morbid fear of misdirecting you; but

even if I am in error, you may know the right drawer

CHaPTEr 9

Dr Lanyon’s Narrative

Strange CaSe of

RobeRt Louis stevenson’s

DrJekyllMrHyde

The One Book – One Edinburgh citywide reading campaign, co-ordinated by the Edinburgh UNESCO

City of Literature Trust, is distributing 10,000 copies of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde across Edinburgh this month to get the city’s residents reading the same book at the same time. Call in to your local library from Friday 22nd February to

pick up a free copy while stocks last.


C H A P T E R 9 – d R L A n y o n ’ s n A R R A T I v E

by its contents: some powders, a phial and a paper

book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you

to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.

“That is the first part of the service: now for the

second. You should be back, if you set out at once

on the receipt of this, long before midnight; but I

will leave you that amount of margin, not only in

the fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be

prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour when

your servants are in bed is to be preferred for what

will then remain to do. at midnight, then, I have

to ask you to be alone in your consulting room, to

admit with your own hand into the house a man who

will present himself in my name, and to place in his

hands the drawer that you will have brought with you

from my cabinet. Then you will have played your part

and earned my gratitude completely. Five minutes

afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, you

will have understood that these arrangements are of

capital importance; and that by the neglect of one

of them, fantastic as they must appear, you might

have charged your conscience with my death or the

shipwreck of my reason.

“Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this

appeal, my heart sinks and my hand trembles at the

bare thought of such a possibility. Think of me at this

hour, in a strange place, labouring under a blackness

of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well

aware that, if you will but punctually serve me, my

troubles will roll away like a story that is told. Serve

me, my dear Lanyon and save

“Your Friend

“H.J.

“P.S. – I had already sealed this up when a fresh

terror struck upon my soul. It is possible that the

post-office may fail me, and this letter not come into

your hands until to-morrow morning. In that case,

dear Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be most

convenient for you in the course of the day; and once

more expect my messenger at midnight. It may then

already be too late; and if that night passes without

event, you will know that you have seen the last of

Henry Jekyll.”

Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my

colleague was insane; but till that was proved beyond

the possibility of doubt, I felt bound to do as he

requested. The less I understood of this farrago, the

less I was in a position to judge of its importance; and

an appeal so worded could not be set aside without

a grave responsibility. I rose accordingly from table,

got into a hansom, and drove straight to Jekyll’s

house. The butler was awaiting my arrival; he had

received by the same post as mine a registered letter

of instruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith

and a carpenter. The tradesmen came while we

were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old

Dr Denman’s surgical theatre, from which (as you

are doubtless aware) Jekyll’s private cabinet is most

conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the

lock excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have



great trouble and have to do much damage, if force

were to be used; and the locksmith was near despair.

But this last was a handy fellow, and after two hour’s

work, the door stood open. The press marked E was

unlocked; and I took out the drawer, had it filled up

with straw and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to

Cavendish Square.

Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The

powders were neatly enough made up, but not with

the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so that it was

plain they were of Jekyll’s private manufacture: and

when I opened one of the wrappers I found what

seemed to me a simple crystalline salt of a white

colour. The phial, to which I next turned my attention,

might have been about half full of a blood-red liquor,

which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and

seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some

volatile ether. at the other ingredients I could make

no guess. The book was an ordinary version book and

contained little but a series of dates. These covered a

period of many years, but I observed that the entries

ceased nearly a year ago and quite abruptly. Here and

there a brief remark was appended to a date, usually

no more than a single

word: “double” occurring

perhaps six times in a total

of several hundred entries;

and once very early in the

list and followed by several

marks of exclamation, “total

failure!!!” all this, though it

whetted my curiosity, told

me little that was definite.

Here were a phial of some

salt, and the record of a

series of experiments that

had led (like too many

of Jekyll’s investigations) to no end of practical

usefulness. How could the presence of these articles

in my house affect either the honour, the sanity, or the

life of my flighty colleague? If his messenger could go

to one place, why could he not go to another? and even

granting some impediment, why was this gentleman

to be received by me in secret? The more I reflected

the more convinced I grew that I was dealing with a

case of cerebral disease; and though I dismissed my

servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver, that I might

be found in some posture of self-defence.

Twelve o’clock had scarce rung out over London,

ere the knocker sounded very gently on the door. I

went myself at the summons, and found a small man

crouching against the pillars of the portico.

“are you come from Dr Jekyll?” I asked.

He told me “yes” by a constrained gesture; and when

I had bidden him enter, he did not obey me without

a searching backward glance into the darkness of the

square. There was a policeman not far off, advancing

with his bull’s eye open; and at the sight, I thought my

visitor started and made greater haste.

These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably;

and as I followed him into the bright light of the

consulting room, I

kept my hand ready

on my weapon.

Here, at last, I had

a chance of clearly

seeing him. I had

never set eyes on

him before, so much

was certain. He was

small, as I have said;

I was struck besides

with the shocking

expression of his face,

with his remarkable

combination of great muscular activity and great



apparent debility of constitution, and – last but not

least – with the odd, subjective disturbance caused by

his neighbourhood. This bore some resemblance to

incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked

sinking of the pulse. at the time, I set it down to

some idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and merely

wondered at the acuteness of the symptoms; but

I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie

much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on

some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred.

This person (who had thus, from the first moment

of his entrance, struck in me what I can only, describe

as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion that

would have made an ordinary person laughable; his

clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and

sober fabric, were enormously too large for him in

every measurement – the trousers hanging on his

legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the

waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar

sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate,

this ludicrous accoutrement was far from moving me

to laughter. rather, as there was something abnormal

and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature

that now faced me – something seizing, surprising

and revolting – this fresh disparity seemed but to

fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interest

in the man’s nature and character, there was added

a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and

status in the world.

These observations, though they have taken so

great a space to be set down in, were yet the work

of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, on fire with

sombre excitement.

“Have you got it?” he cried. “Have you got it?” and

so lively was his impatience that he even laid his hand

upon my arm and sought to shake me.

I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy

pang along my blood. “Come, sir,” said I. “You forget

that I have not yet the pleasure of your acquaintance.

Be seated, if you please.” and I showed him an

example, and sat down myself in my customary seat

and with as fair an imitation of my ordinary manner

to a patient, as the lateness of the hour, the nature

of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of my

visitor, would suffer me to muster.

“I beg your pardon, Dr Lanyon,” he replied civilly

enough. “What you say is very well founded; and my

impatience has shown its heels to my politeness. I

come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr

Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment;

and I understood ...” He paused and put his hand to

his throat, and I could see, in spite of his collected

manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches

of the hysteria – “I understood, a drawer ...”

But here I took pity on my visitor’s suspense, and

some perhaps on my own growing curiosity.

“There it is, sir,” said I, pointing to the drawer,

where it lay on the floor behind a table and still

covered with the sheet.

He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his

hand upon his heart: I could hear his teeth grate with

the convulsive action of his jaws; and his face was so

ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life and

reason.

“Compose yourself,” said I.

He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with

the decision of despair, plucked away the sheet. at

sight of the contents, he

uttered one loud sob

of such immense relief

that I sat petrified. and

the next moment, in a

voice that was already

fairly well under control,

“Have you a graduated

glass?” he asked.



I rose from my place with something of an effort

and gave him what he asked.

He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured

out a few minims of the red tincture and added one

of the powders. The mixture, which was at first of

a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals

melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly,

and to throw off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly and

at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the

compound changed to a dark

purple, which faded again

more slowly to a watery green.

My visitor, who had watched

these metamorphoses with

a keen eye, smiled, set down

the glass upon the table, and

then turned and looked upon

me with an air of scrutiny.

“and now,” said he, “to

settle what remains. Will you

be wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to

take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your

house without further parley? or has the greed of

curiosity too much command of you? Think before

you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. as

you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and

neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service

rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted

as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer

to choose, a new province of knowledge and new

avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you,

here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight

shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief

of Satan.”

“Sir,” said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from

truly possessing, “you speak enigmas, and you will

perhaps not wonder that I hear you with no very

strong impression of belief. But I have gone too far

in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I

see the end.”

“It is well,” replied my visitor. “Lanyon, you

remember your vows: what follows is under the seal

of our profession. and now, you who have so long

been bound to the most narrow and material views,

you who have denied the virtue of transcendental

medicine, you who have derided your superiors –

behold!”

He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. a

cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table

and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with

open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a

change – he seemed to swell – his face became suddenly

black and the features seemed to melt and alter – and

the next moment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped

back against the wall, my arms raised to shield me from

that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.

“O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and

again; for there before my eyes – pale and shaken,

and half fainting, and groping before him with his

hands, like a man restored from death – there stood

Henry Jekyll!

What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring

my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I heard

what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now

when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself



if I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken

to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits

by me at all hours of the day and night; and I feel that

my days are numbered, and that I must die; and yet I

shall die incredulous. as for the moral turpitude that

man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I

can not, even in memory, dwell on it without a start

of horror. I will say but one thing, Utterson, and that

(if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more

than enough. The creature who crept into my house

that night was, on Jekyll’s own confession, known by

the name of Hyde and hunted for in every corner of

the land as the murderer of Carew.

HaSTIE LaNYON

WAVERLEY ENGLISH WAVERLEY SCOTS

WAVERLEY GAEL IC B ARRINGTON STOKE

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sTRAnE CAsE o DrJekyll MrHydeimg.metro.co.uk/pdf/jekyllchp9.pdf · The One Book – One Edinburgh citywide reading campaign, co-ordinated by the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature